1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a computer hardware and software system including a computer input device that can be operatively combined with several methods of display on a computer screen under software and hardware control for the purpose of browsing through, information, such as documents stored in a computer readable memory. The invention facilitates the browsing of a document stored in a computer readable memory in such a way that it allows a rapid view of what contents are present and the organization of the material in the document, as well as rapid access to the items in the document involved. Specifically, the present invention relates to mechanical browsing devices that provide a mechanical interface to a users' fingers in such a way that users can receive force and frictional feedback so that the control of the browsing process can be effected at high speed and accuracy and without unnecessary stress to the fingers and hands. Another aspect of the present invention concerns the complex displays and manipulations of flipping pages in a virtual book effected by the mechanical browsing device or other devices.
2. Description of the Background
Currently, the method that is mainly used for viewing documents stored in a computer is through a computer monitor screen. For documents that are longer/larger than can be contained within one screen, a user input device is provided to scroll the document up and down or to jump to a particular point in the document (through the use of, for example, a “mouse” coupled with scroll bars at the edges of the document displayed on the screen or through the use of hypertext links).
However, as recognized by the present inventors most people do not find this a particularly convenient way to view a document, as compared with a book. That this is true is evidenced in that despite the fact that the computer has been in increasing use, there is not only no corresponding reduction in paper use, but an increase in paper quantity is required to print what is conveniently stored in a computer that can be seemingly easily and flexibly manipulated for viewing. Sometimes the printed version of the information involved is necessary, like in the case of printing a picture on a sheet of paper to be pasted on some surface (e.g., a wall), or in the case of the convenience of having a relatively light, hardy paperback book for reading in almost any possible situation and location, but there are times when a reader is quite happy to sit at a desk in front of a desktop computer or handle a notebook computer away from the desk, and yet the reader would still prefer a printed version of the document in a hand-held format. This is especially true in the case of looking through manuals, including software manuals, to understand how to operate a device or software application. The irony is that computer software packages usually come with thick and heavy manuals containing information that can easily be stored on a light-weight CD-ROM, and even if the manuals are sometimes dispensed in the form of a CD-ROM, more often than not people would print them out into a hard-copy format in order to facilitate reading.
What is involved when one interacts with the printed material in a book is a subtle and complicated process. To start with, material in a book is presented in a sequential order, with a continuity of material from page to page, and there is also a hierarchical structure in the material presented (as the material is organized into chapters, sections, subsections, etc.) because ideas in the material are related to each other in some kind of conceptual hierarchy. The human perceptual system inputs data in a sequential manner, and after a book is read from the beginning to the end in a sequential fashion, the brain then recreates the conceptual hierarchy after viewing the material involved. However, very often one does not read a book (or input the material involved) from the beginning to the end because (a) one wants to have an overview of the material present; (b) one is searching for something of interest to him/her; or (c) one is interested in reading only portions of the book (in the case of, say, reading the manual to understand how to operate something). In these cases, one browses through the subject book to find the material of unique interest to that reader.
Two basic things are achieved in the browsing process. First, the browser has a glimpse of what are the contents of the book document. Second, the browser has an idea of approximately where the items of interest are so that the browser can (a) return to look for them later when needed, and (b) have an understanding of the relationships between the material currently being viewed and other material (i.e., an understanding of the hierarchical structure involved). When browsing a book document, many finger-operations are required of the browser in order to flip through the pages and, together with the inherent sequential order imposed by the pages, very quickly allow the browser to have an understanding of the nature, location and organization of the material involved.
In the process of browsing through a book, one can perform the following operations:                (a) flip through the pages at varying speeds depending on the level of detail at which one wishes to view the material in the book;        (b) jump to the approximate location of the item of interest;        (c) change the direction of flipping (forward or backward) very rapidly because                    (i) one would like to compare and contrast material on different pages,            (ii) after jumping to an approximate location of some items of interest one would like to find their exact locations, or            (iii) one is unsure of where the item of interest is and is in the process of searching for it; and                        (d) mark the locations of some pages of interest that one may want to later return.        
All these operations are performed very rapidly with the fingers interacting with the flipping pages and with minimal unnecessary movements of the fingers and hands. Interestingly, a book/magazine with soft and flexible pages is harder to handle because more finger and hand movements are needed to browse through it, while books with stiff pages can be browsed with almost no movement of the hand.
In currently available methods of browsing through documents stored in a computer, e.g., the use of a mouse combined with scroll bars and buttons on the computer screen, more movements of the hands are necessary to effect the various operations described above. Also, fine control of the hand or fingers (depending on whether the mouse uses hand movement to move the cursor on the screen or finger movement like in the case of a track ball) is necessary to position the cursor on the screen at the required places. The process is both lengthy and clumsy. The lengthiness of the process taxes the human short term memory's ability to remember items encountered in the recent past for the purpose of establishing the relationships between items and the clumsiness of the process creates distraction and interferes with the short term memory process, a well known effect in perceptual psychology.
Because material in a book is organized into pages, it also enhances the ability of the reader to better remember the location of various portions of the material involved. Also, unlike the process of scrolling through a document on a screen like what is normally done in a word-processor, wherein the contents become a blur and reading is impossible, when one moves through the material in a book through flipping, one is still able to read at least the approximate contents, if not the details. It is due to these features that a person browsing through a book can acquire a good understanding of its contents, the location of specific items and organization of the material.
It is because of the reasons set forth above, people still prefer to read a book in their hands, rather than a document image displayed on a computer screen using currently available methods.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,467,102 (Kuno et al.) discloses a device for document viewing that consists of two display screens. One of the purposes of using two display screens is to allow the user to display two different pages from the document so that they can be read side-by-side (e.g., a diagram and its textual explanation). Another purpose is to allow a large picture to be displayed simultaneously on both pages. The Kuno et al. device allows users to change the speed of movement through the document through a pressure sensor—the more pressure applied, the faster the pages in the document are moved through. The Kuno et al. device also allows the document to be viewed in the forward or backward direction by pressing on a forward sensor area or a reverse sensor area respectively. One can also select a page to jump to by pressing on an icon displayed on the screen. However the Kuno et al. device still does not provide the same convenience as browsing through a book, primarily because when switching between the operations for different controls—the speed of movement through the document, the change of direction of viewing, and the jumping to different parts of the document—there are a lot more hand and finger movements than is the case in manipulating a physical book. Moreover, the Kuno et al. device is a specialized, relatively costly device with sensors and hardware built onto two display screens, whereas the present inventor recognizes that a lower cost and more practical device would be one that adds modularly to the existing computer system.
Currently, there are also computer mice that can eliminate the above-mentioned problem of positioning cursor on the computer screen with a conventional mouse (i.e., fine control of the hand or fingers is needed). These mice allow the user to specify “hot locations” on the screen on which the cursor “homes onto” with less fine control than conventional mice. Furthermore, a subset of these mice can generate “vertical only” or “horizontal only” movement of the cursor so that the scrolling process requires less fine control of the muscle than is required with a conventional mouse. These mice eliminate some, but not all, of the problems associated with the conventional methods of computer input as far as computer-based document browsing is concerned.
In U.S. Pat. No. 5,417,575 (1995) McTaggart discloses an electronic book that comprises laminated sheets bound together in the form of a book. On each of these sheets, printed material is arranged on the top layer and below that layer is an electronic backdrop containing thin light-emitting diodes (LED's) and pressure sensitive switches affixed onto a backing sheet. The LED's generate visual signals that can be seen through the top layer for the purpose of highlighting parts of the printed material. The pressure switches, positioned under certain items in the printed material, are for the purpose of sensing the user's selection of those items. A speaker is also provided on the book to generate audio signals for explaining the text or giving the user audio feedback. Contact or photo-sensitive switches are also embedded in the pages to allow the electronic circuits to know which pages are currently being viewed, so that the appropriate audio and visual signals can be generated. Even though this apparatus is in a form that allows a person to handle it like handling a typical book, with visual and audio enhancements of the printed material as well as facilities that accept the user's feedback, it is basically a hard-wired device that is not reprogrammable and different hardware has to be configured for books with different contents. No provision is available for downloading document files from a computer for display on the electronic book nor is the electronic book able to display any arbitrary document file. This device is hence not suitable for browsing through documents stored in a computer.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,909,207 (Ho) discloses a computer-based system that allows users to view and manipulate documents in the form of an electronic virtual book that addresses the above problems in browsing information in the electronic medium. This virtual book system simulates the paper book very closely and has two major components. One is the representation of the paper book on the computer screen, complete with realistic flipping pages and thickness representation. The other is the use of a browsing device that allows 1. rapid change of direction of flipping, 2. rapid change of speed of flipping, 3. selection and jumping to any desired page, and 4. bookmarking of the pages. The browsing device allows one to use the fingers to manipulate the pages in the book much in the same way as in the case of the paper book. Therefore, the virtual manipulation of the pages together with the book image on the screen constitute a virtual book system. This virtual book system improves on the methods used in current electronic means of information browsing in a very significant way such that the ease of browsing information can approach that obtainable with a paper book. This allows users to be able to quickly browse through a large number of pages (perhaps thousands of pages) of information and obtain the idea of the structure and contents involved and hence a good overview of the entire collection of material in the “virtual book”. Other than being able to have a good idea of the structure and contents of the material involved, the process of browsing through the material presented in the form of a virtual book much like in the case of the paper book also facilitates subsequent searches for items in the material.
In U.S. Pat. No. 5,909,207 (Ho) the virtual book browsing device that mainly includes a pressure and position sensor. The pressure the finger exerts on the pressure sensor controls the speed of flipping through the pages of the virtual book. The movement of the finger on the position sensor on the browsing device in the virtual book system corresponds to the movement of the finger on the thickness of the paper book to select a page to jump to. The combination of the pressure and position sensor therefore allows one to rapidly browse through the virtual book.
However, the method of speed and page-jumping control in U.S. Pat. No. 5,909,207 (Ho) suffers from one shortcoming. Because an electronic pressure and position sensor is used, it is not able to provide the user with force and frictional feedback. Because our motor/muscular system is adapted to function in the real physical world, it expects resistance when it exerts forces on objects. This allows it to precisely determine the amount of force to exert in order to bring about certain desired consequences. It is because of this nature of the motor/muscular system that despite the fact that electronic touch pads have been widely in use on, say, notebook computers to allow one to use the finger to control the “mouse” cursor on the computer screen, many people still prefer to use, say, a physical “mouse” to control the cursor. The physical mouse, when moving on a table top, encounters friction and this information is fed back to the motor system controlling it through the fingers, hand and arm. This information facilitates the motor system's sending the right kind of neural signals to control the fingers/hand/arm that in turn control the mouse to position the cursor very rapidly and accurately on the computer screen, with minimum stress to the neural system. An analogous situation exists in the case of the virtual book system of U.S. Pat. No. 5,909,207 (Ho). A mechanical browsing device that feeds back information on force and friction will bring about highest accuracy and speed and minimum stress to the browsing process for the virtual book.
Also, presently, the methods for manipulating flipping pages in a virtual book that have been described in a number of patents (e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 5,909,207, Ho) are confined to mainly very simple and basic manipulations of single or multiple flipping pages. For example, when multiple pages are being flipped across the computer screen, there is no means to control these pages individually. However, when one or more pages are flipping across a virtual book, a lot more information can be obtained from them (e.g., on the contents and structure of the virtual book) and in a quicker way, and the visual search process for desired items in the virtual book can be made a lot more efficient if the user is allowed to manipulate these flipping pages in more complex and flexible ways.
Therefore, the inventor has identified there exists a need for a mechanical browsing device for the virtual book system for rapid browsing of information and there also exists a need for more complex methods of displaying and manipulating the flipping pages on a virtual book to better obtain information from the virtual book.